Max Péral

Biography

Max Péral slipped in and out of the spotlight long before spotlights were kind to character actors. In 1914, when cinema was still learning to walk, he appeared in Loyalty, a silent short that preserved his gestures on brittle nitrate. Two decades later he resurfaced in Prince d’une nuit (1936), trading the hush of early film for the crackle of early sound, and closed his brief but telling career in 1938 with Les chevaliers de la cloche, forever sealing his face to French pre-war screens. He left the stage for good in 1954.